Does gender dysphoria have a biological basis?

If you ask most experts in the field what causes someone to become transgender (as in experiencing gender dysphoria or being gender incongruent), they will tell you that this most likely caused by a combination of biological, cultural, social and personal factors. Most of them will agree that there is a significant biological component.

This is important, because it means that it is hard to dismiss gender incongruence as something imaginary caused by political and cultural pressure from sinister people promoting some kind of "gender ideology". All serious scientists in the field acknowledge that the identities of trans people are real and tangible and the great majority believe there are biological factors influencing the development of gender incongruence.

That does not mean that our concepts of gender are not influenced by culture. They most certainly are, as seen in the anti-trans insistence on gender being reduced to "biological sex", another concept that is as vague and ambiguous as the term "gender".

"Biological sex", as it is used by anti-trans activist, is a political and cultural construct that goes against everything we know about gender variance and intersex conditions, both in humans and in other animals. 

In intersex people chromosomes, gonads, genitalia and hormones do not match in wide variety of combinations, and in trans people a persistent and intense experience of a gendered self does not mach the gender assigned at birth. Dismissing this as "illusions" or "irrelevant variations" does not cut it.

What science says about the biological component

Research indicates significant biological factors influencing gender identity and dysphoria, particularly in brain structure and function. ​

Pluribus and fighting the hive mind

May Rude has written an interesting article on the sci-fi serie Pluribus' reference to conversion therapy as a way to create a totalitarian society and belief system.  Pluribus reflects on the way a confirmative culture will use all types of social conditioning to force people to adhere to the beliefs and behaviors required by that culture.

Conversion therapy is the logical extension of this practice. The fear of social exclusion and this kind of violence is what makes most people in such a culture complicit in the oppression, even many of those who are themselves outsiders.

Pluribus can be summed up as Contact + Body Snatchers + Matrix, but in very original and creative ways. These are the only spoilers you will get before the embedded video.

I love Pluribus because it using common sci-fi tropes manages to clarify why the hive mind of oppressive cultures (being those fascist, nationalist religious fundamentalist or communist) cannot allow the outsiders to exist in the open, because their very existence invalidates the god given or "natural" order defined by the oppressors.

Many of the ones who embrace the hive mind do so because they need a narrowly ordered universe that gives them a clear and unambiguous role that calms their anxieties. The anxieties are, of course, caused by the fact that the universe is not a safe and predictable place, and that whatever the meaning of it all is, that meaning contains diversity, uncertainty and suffering.

The oppressors cannot handle this so they have to design an imaginary universe where these uncertainties cannot exist, and where - to the extent they do exist - are caused by the very ones who break the rules and invalidates their world view.

In any period with great upheavals many of the fearful ones become militants. They use verbal and physical violence to force everyone else to obey. This is where we are right now, especially as regards transphobia and racism.

Pluribus manages to describe how hard it can be to stand up to the hive-mind, because the hive-mind promises love, companionship and a sense of belonging. The loneliness of outsiders can be heart breaking. But Pluribus also describes the falseness of the promises made. The hive-mind's love is not real love. Accepting the dogmas of its world is not real freedom. There is no room for unique life journeys in their society.

And that is why we have to fight back. Every day.

You find Pluribus over at Apple TV. Spoilers in the text below the video.

The invaders want Carol, the protagonist of Pluribus, to join them in their hive mind, giving up all individuality in the process. Carol, a lesbian, has been through this before - in conversion therapy.